Albuquerque Rejects Abortion Ban

Good news — voters in Albuquerque, New Mexico have voted down a measure that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks.

Voters on Tuesday rejected the measure 55 percent to 45 percent following an emotional and graphic campaign that brought in national groups and hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising. The campaign included protests that compared abortion to the Holocaust and displayed pictures of aborted fetuses.

Protests were only the start.

While a city-wide measure wouldn’t ordinarily garner the high-profile attention this one did, anti-choice zealots all but guaranteed the vote would receive national attention.

As you may recall, Albuquerque is where a woman handed out these anti-abortion fetus cards to kids on Halloween.

Actions like this that are aimed at shocking or grossing out people may not have the same amount of traction now as they may have in the past. At least not in areas that aren’t already biased against a certain issue.

Handing out fetus photos to kids on Halloween certainly isn’t going to endear your position to swing voters. On the contrary, it may have compelled some to turn out and vote against the measure out of societal disgust.

The best—by which I mean the worst—part of the story is that the fetus fetishists fully intend to try it in other cities. And at least four (depending on Anthony Kennedy’s mood on the day) of the Supremes will likely declare that municipal laws like this do not create a constitutionally impermissable undue burden on women.

Roe looks pretty much doomed, in any case. The majority of the court isn’t even trying to pretend any more that stare decisis matters in this case.

For some perspective on the Albuquerque election and why it turned out the way it did, this is a pretty good place to start.

(Off-topic, but is it Disqus or Banter that’s banjaxed the a tag? I had the same thing happen yesterday when I commented on one of Chez’s pieces at the main site.)

–alopecia

Christopher Foxx

Handing out fetus photos to kids on Halloween certainly isn’t going to endear your position to swing voters. On the contrary, it may have compelled some to turn out and vote against the measure out of societal disgust.

Exactly. As I pointed out at the time, tactics like this are counter-productive. And that they would be used only shows that the goal of the anti-abortion folks isn’t really to protect anyone. (“Children are precious so I want to protect the unborn. And I’ll do it by terrorizing 5-year-olds.”)

Their real goal is to make themselves feel less pathetic by controlling other people’s lives.

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